The Ned M'Keown Stories eBook

THE BATTLE OF THE FACTIONS.

Accordingly, the next evening found them all present,
when it was determined unanimously that Pat Frayne,
the hedge schoolmaster, should furnish them with the
intellectual portion of the entertainment for that
night, their object being each to tell a story in his
turn.

“Very well,” said Pat, “I am quite
simultaneous to the wishes of the company; but you
will plaise to observe, that there is clay which is
moist, and clay which is not moist. Now, under
certain circumstances, the clay which is not moist,
ought to be made moist, and one of those circumstances
that in which any larned person becomes loquacious,
and indulges in narrative. The philosophical raison,
is decided on by Socrates, and the great Phelim M’Poteen,
two of the most celebrated liquorary characters that
ever graced the sunny side of a plantation, is, that
when a man commences a narration with his clay not
moist, the said narration is found, by all lamed experience,
to be a very dry one—­ehem!”

“Very right, Mr. Frayne,” replied Andy
Morrow; “so in ordher to avoid a dhry narrative,
Nancy, give the masther a jug of your stoutest to wet
his whistle, and keep him in wind as he goes along.”

“Thank you, Mr. Morrow—­and in requital
for your kindness, I will elucidate you such a sample
of unadulterated Ciceronian eloquence, as would not
be found originating from every chimney-corner in this
Province, anyhow. I am not bright, however, at
oral relation. I have accordingly composed into
narrative the following tale, which is appellated
’The Battle of the Factions:’—­

“My grandfather, Connor O’Callaghan, though
a tall, erect man, with white flowing hair, like snow,
that falls profusely about his broad shoulders, is
now in his eighty-third year: an amazing age,
considhering his former habits. His countenance
is still marked with honesty and traces of hard fighting,
and his cheeks ruddy and cudgel-worn; his eyes, though
not as black as they often used to be, have lost very
little of that nate fire which characterizes the eyes
of the O’Callaghans, and for which I myself
have been—­but my modesty won’t allow
me to allude to that: let it be sufficient for
the present to say that there never was remembered
so handsome a man in his native parish, and that I
am as like him as one Cork-red phatie is to another.
Indeed, it has been often said, that it would be hard
to meet an O’Callaghan without a black eye in
his head. He has lost his fore-teeth, however,
a point in which, Unfortunately, I, though his grandson,
have strong resemblance to him. The truth is,
they were knocked out of him in rows, before he had
reached his thirty-fifth year—­a circumstance
which the kind reader will be pleased to receive in
extenuation for the same defect in myself. That,
however, is but a trifle, which never gave either of
us much trouble.